FC: Enonymous.com's privacy ratings include errors, oversights

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

*********

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,35587,00.html

   Odd Privacy Ratings Exposed
   by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)
   3:00 a.m. Apr. 12, 2000 PDT

   Marc Rotenberg is nothing if not a privacy zealot. As the founder of
   the Electronic Privacy Information Center, he's spent the last decade
   arguing, pleading, and agitating for everyone to take the topic even
   half as seriously as he does.

   So it was something of a surprise for Rotenberg to learn the epic.org
   site received only two of a possible four stars from enonymous, a San
   Diego company that published what it billed as a "comprehensive"
   privacy survey on Tuesday.

   "Enonymous doesn't have a clue. It doesn't even have close to a clue
   about evaluating a privacy policy," Rotenberg said.

   EPIC isn't alone in finding bizarre errors and odd oversights in
   enonymous' database, designed to tell anyone using the company's
   "advisor" software what the privacy practices of websites are.

   That same database was used to produce Tuesday's survey, which said
   that of the 1,000 most-trafficked sites on the Web, 8.6 percent
   deserved four stars.

   Although enonymous claims 30,000 entries using "strict, objective
   criteria," that list does not include popular Microsoft properties
   that receive millions of visitors, and incorrectly says places like
   geek-culture destination slashdot.org have no privacy standards.

   Even when websites are listed, the entries are frequently
   contradictory.

   CNet properties download.com, help.com, and search.com have
   word-for-word identical privacy policies, but receive respective
   ratings of one, two, and three stars out of four.

   Other sites suffer the same problem. Hotbot.com, suck.com, and
   wired.com (all are owned by Lycos, also the parent company of Wired
   News) link to the same Web page for their privacy statements -- but
   inexplicably receive one, two, and three stars.

   Tim Kane, enonymous's co-founder and director of privacy, said he
   couldn't explain the problems.

   "It might be a glitch in our database," he said.

   If it's not corrected, it could call into question the future of the
   company, which depends on the reliability and accuracy of its data to
   differentiate itself from competitors in the increasingly crowded
   privacy-protection field.

   [...]

   News outlets such as Time Warner's time.com, fortune.com, and
   allpolitics.com are listed as "not yet reviewed." Nor is Ziff-Davis'
   zdnn.com, of which enonymous simply says: "Congratulations! You are
   among the first pioneers to surf this website in the enonymous
   community."

   Nobody at enonymous appears to have stopped by Microsoft's
   windowsmedia.com or moneycentral.com, although each receives about 4.5
   million unique visitors per month, according to Media Metrix's
   February 2000 ranking.

   [...]

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